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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003202">Pirates Among the Unfallen Stars</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raksash/pseuds/Raksash'>Raksash</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dungeons &amp; Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bad Guy Pirates, Elves, F/M, Let's throw some youngsters to the wolves and watch them become wolves themselves, Sailing</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-04</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 22:14:52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24003202</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raksash/pseuds/Raksash</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Forgotten Realms, two young elven lovers, one a noble, the other a bard, are captured by pirates and manage to talk their way onto the crew. This story tracks follows them as they explore and eventually come to influence the lands around the Sea of Fallen Stars.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Pirates Among the Unfallen Stars</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <i></i>
</p>
<p>Spring, 1270 DR</p>
<p>Blood pounded in Alerathla’s ears. Her heart was beating so hard, she was afraid it was going to burst from her chest. She was staring a lifetime of slavery in the face, and she had no idea what to do.</p>
<p>It was so stupid! None of this would have happened if her father and mother had approved her request to marry. Why couldn’t they see Thallan for the man he was, instead of for the bloodlines he didn’t have?</p>
<p>And now instead of being back in the Elven Court in her family’s villa, lounging with her love, Alerathla was chained on the deck of a pirate ship.</p>
<p>She wasn’t, technically, supposed to be here. This mission had been given to Thallan alone: to seek out their long-lost kin in the Chondalwood, identify how many there were and what their condition was, and if possible establish trading relations.</p>
<p>It was a mission of no little importance, especially for an elf who was only technically a noble because of his status as a bard, but Alerathla had detected her father’s deft political hand at work. It would be impossible to refuse, and it would take a man whom Durlan Echorn deemed unsuitable to marry his daughter far away.</p>
<p>And of course, if Thallan was unable to find the elves that no one in Elven Court were even certain still lived, he would be too disgraced to return.</p>
<p>Alerathla had seen it all, and had been unwilling to let the man she loved be so ruthlessly shoved aside. And so she had invited herself along. Her, the blooming flower of the ancient and powerful Echorn clan, sun elf of impeccable standing, bundling herself off in the middle of the night to set sail on a human ship across the Sea of Fallen Stars.</p>
<p>Only now things had gone horribly wrong. Her father had wanted this trip to make Thallan disappear. It seemed he was going to get his wish.</p>
<p>“Aye, you’re a lovely little lass,” a horribly scarred pirate said, pulling Alerathla’s thoughts back to the present. </p>
<p>She was on the deck of the pirate ship that had taken hers when they were a tenday out to sea. Most of her ship’s human crew had been killed; the few survivors had been chained together with her and Thallan and pulled across a boarding plank onto the pirate ship. Now they huddled together, while those pirates not busy transferring cargo or readying the prize to sail circled around them.</p>
<p>“I would keep your distance,” Thallan said. He was no older than she and must have been as terrified, but unlike her he was a trained actor. His voice, his body language, all spoke of powerful self-confidence. “Unless you want to lose it for assaulting a member of your crew.”</p>
<p>The pirate who had been leering at Alerathla turned, guffawing. “Ye’re no crew, my lad! You’re bound for the slave pits of the Dragonisle, to make us a hearty piles of gold.”</p>
<p>Thallan had maneuvered himself to put him closer to Alerathla than to any of the chained humans. Now he smiled at the pirate, and then around at the others who had turned to watch the confrontation. “That would be unwise,” he said in a clear, cold voice, and made a crooked gesture with one bronze hand.</p>
<p>Magical force burst from his wrists. They shattered his manacles, sending metal flying across the deck. One strand of light lanced down the chain connecting him to Alerathla. She braced herself, and a moment later her manacles exploded as well.</p>
<p>“Not to mention a waste,” Thallan said into the sudden silence.</p>
<p>Alerathla risked a glance around. Every single person on the deck of both ships was staring at them. That included the captain: a rather handsome black-haired main with a great beak of a nose, who had been conferring on the poop deck with several officers and a man in the battered plate mail of a priest of Tempus.</p>
<p>Her love didn’t even look in her direction, but Alerathla didn’t need him to. They had met as apprentices under the same wizard back in Elven Court. That apprenticeship had only been completed a few years ago, and they had progressed little further in magical power. Thallan must have used some kind of hidden magical item, and it most likely only had a single use.</p>
<p>But he had given them an opening. Now she had to exploit it.</p>
<p>Though she had been below decks during the brief battle for the ship, she had seen several sailors who had been killed by arrows. Archery was one of Alerathla’s loves, and she had looked for the archers even in the daze she’d been in since she’d been hauled up on deck.</p>
<p>Most of the humans were using weak little short bows, but one either had more training or more ambition and had an elven-style long bow. And fortunately for her, he was standing nearby.</p>
<p>She supposed he and the other archers were supposed to be intimidating the captives with the possibility of instant death if they stepped out of line. If so, he was notably failing. He didn’t even have an arrow drawn, and his bow was hanging slack in his hand.</p>
<p>He was completely unprepared when she took the four steps over to him and yanked the bow from him. At the last moment his fingers tightened, but Alerathla had been shooting powerful bows and working out with extra-heavy swords since she was fifteen. That was almost a century ago, and though she didn’t look it, she was stronger than most human barbarians.</p>
<p>The bow was hers without any struggle, and as the man gaped and tried to stumble backward, Alerathla grabbed an arrow from the quiver at his waist as well.</p>
<p>Stalking back to the center of the ship, she waved the arrow at one of the other archers. “You. Shoot at me.”</p>
<p>The man, as weather-beaten as the captain but nowhere close to as handsome, glanced around frantically. “The captain would have me keel-hauled if I killed a slave as valuable as you.”</p>
<p>Alerathla rolled her eyes. “Then shoot me somewhere non-lethal. Somewhere that priest can heal me up with ease.” She had already assumed a shooting stance, and she reached down to pat her forward thigh. “Right here.”</p>
<p>The archer glanced over his shoulder at the poop deck, where the captain had stepped forward to watch the confrontation. More pirates had spilled up onto the deck from below, forming an armed, watchful ring. The captain nodded.</p>
<p>As the pirate’s bow came up, Alerathla felt her world slow down.  She had seen her father and aunts make this shot dozens of times. But despite decades of practice, she’d never managed the feat herself.</p>
<p>Now there was no choice. Now this was for real, and not a practice shot that was deliberately aimed wide. Now, her entire life, and that of the man she loved, depended on her being perfect.</p>
<p>The two bows rose together. Alerathla was faster on the draw, even with the stronger pull of the longbow. And then she stood, waiting.</p>
<p>There were barely thirty feet between the two archers. Alerathla had stacked the deck as best she could by telling the man exactly where to aim, but that came with its own risks. If he decided to shoot at a different part of her body, she was already lost.</p>
<p>She was never able to tell, later, exactly want she saw that told her the man was releasing the arrow. All she knew was that without conscious thought her own fingers opened, and her own arrow leapt into the air.</p>
<p>The two arrows met just over fifteen feet ahead of Alerathla. The steel head of her arrow neatly split the wood of the pirate arrow’s shaft. It plunged forward, dragging the other arrow with it, and embedded itself in the deck barely five feet in front of the other archer.</p>
<p>An audible gasp rose from the pirates. Alerathla did her best to look nonchalant, instead of leaping and shouting the way she wanted. She had done it. Finally, she had done it! Her father would be so pleased. If she ever made it home, of course.</p>
<p>She raised an eyebrow at the man from whom she had stolen the bow. Then she chanted a few words in elven and an invisible magical hand pulled the arrows free of the deck and floated them over to her.</p>
<p>Alerathla looked down at the neat bisection. If she tried another hundred years, she wasn’t certain she’d make that shot again so well. But that was fine. In another hundred years she doubted there would be a more important shot.</p>
<p>Her eyes rose to the archer. “I like this bow. I think it’s mine now.” Turning her head, she looked at the captain. “Right?”</p>
<p>A small smile tugged at the edge of the captain’s lips. Somehow, it just made him look more dangerous. “Welcome to the Sea Dagger.”</p>
<p>* *</p>
<p>The Sea Dagger’s rigging sang with tension, the mighty ropes vibrating against the powerful wind and the billowing sails it filled. The ship was in full pursuit of a merchantman, cutting through ten foot waves with a speed to thrill the hearts of anyone not being chased by it.</p>
<p>For the merchantman, that speed was nothing short of terrifying. Sea Dagger’s prey was a cog. While somewhat more sea-worthy than the round, tub-like boats Alerathla had seen when she and Thallan had gone through Marsember, it was still built for cargo capacity, not speed or grace. It had been heading south, likely trying to eventually reach Turmish while skirting well to the west of the Pirate Isles.</p>
<p>Now it would reach nowhere but the Dragonisle. The Sembian coast was far enough distant that not even Thallan’s keen eyes could have spotted it from the crow’s nest. Its shelter was certainly far too distant to make any difference to the merchantman’s fate.</p>
<p>Most of the ship’s crew were busy with the chase. Captain Junsable should have been directing them, but he had turned that over to his capable first mate and called the two newest crew to his cabin.</p>
<p>“We’ll be on that ship in another bell,” Junsable told Thallan and Alerathla as soon as they closed the door. “By the way they’re handling their sails, they’re packing more crew than that tub we found you on. More crew means more of a fight. Especially when they see our flag.”</p>
<p>Both elves nodded. They had noticed the black flag with three white skulls on it during their initial capture. They had learned since that it was the mark of Captain Junsable, and heralded one of the Inner Sea’s most blood-thirsty pirates.</p>
<p>“We’re going to kill most of the people on that ship,” Junsable said, bluntly. “The rest are going down in the hold with the rest of your former crew to be sold as slaves. I need you to tell me, right now, that you will help us do that.”</p>
<p>In the nine days since their ship had been taken, Thallan and Alerathla had been kept busy doing the menial chores of common seamen along with the rest of the crew. But if their days were busy, their nights were still mostly to themselves. They had hammocks of their own that they slung in one corner of the ship, and had been able to speak quietly to each other in elven.</p>
<p>Much of what had passed between them had been born of worry and love, and relief that they had at least so far escaped the fate of the humans in the hold. But they had also planned for the future. They had known that this exact situation would be coming, and they discussed their options.</p>
<p>So now they both nodded. “We will,” Thallan said. “Alerathla is better with blades than I am, and we don’t have much in the way of battle magic. We think we would serve best as archers.”</p>
<p>“You do, do you?” Junsable said. He crossed his arms. “Hard to argue with that display you put on. But tell me this: how many battles have you fought?”</p>
<p>Thallan opened his mouth to spin some kind of lie, but Alerathla  had a better read on the captain. Both in what he suspected, and how flexible he was willing to be. “This will be our first,” she admitted with a small smile.</p>
<p>“As I thought.” Junsable nodded. “You put on a good show on the deck, but I’ve been reading people a long time. Your magic isn’t nearly as strong as you made it appear, is it?”</p>
<p>Now that Alerathla had blazed the way, Thallan followed. “No, it isn’t. And we don’t have much battle magic in our spellbooks; our former master didn’t believe in giving dangerous magic away until you’re proved yourself.” He smiled slightly. “And one never did to that old thunderbeast.”</p>
<p>“I’ll talk with Firelorn,” Junsable said, meaning the ship’s wizard. “Not many pirates have multiple ship’s wizards. He’ll be expected to train you up to something worth the name.”</p>
<p>He watched as they nodded with a curious expression. “You’re sounding remarkably confident for a first battle. A first kill. Not everyone kills as easily as I do.”</p>
<p>Alerathla shrugged. “You’ve picked an excellent target. The Sembians have invaded Cormanthor in the past. They nibble at our edges, cut down our trees, and skirmish with our patrols. They are our enemies, as much as they are your prey.” She shrugged again. “I have no problem becoming rich, and helping my shipmates become rich, off the goods of my enemies.”</p>
<p>Their captain grinned. “Keep up that attitude and you’ll make an admirable pirate. Alright. Your post is the archer’s nest, just below the crow’s nest. I want to see how elven archery deals with the rolling sea.”</p>
<p>“We’ll show you,” Thallan said with more confidence than he felt. “And if in our travels you could steal me a long bow, you would have my gratitude. I don’t have much experience with short bows.”</p>
<p>Junsable rolled his eyes, but they could tell he was amused. “That’s the problem with crew. They keep bringing you problems. Go on. Get out of here.”</p>
<p>The two elves got.</p>
<p>* *</p>
<p>Fighting on a ship was very different than fighting in the forest, Thallan thought as he watched the chase unfold from the archer’s platform. Especially the elven way of fighting, where the defender’s first warning was a sharp volley of arrows.</p>
<p>There was nothing in the way of surprise, here. At least not beyond the initial shock the merchants must have felt when they first caught sight of Sea Dagger’s sails. From then on it was slow, steady, and inevitable.</p>
<p>Despite its speed, it had taken Sea Dagger much of the morning to close the distance on the merchants’ cog. Once it did, however, things sped up immensely.</p>
<p>When he looked back on his first battle years later, Thallan would remember nothing more than a vague blur. He and the other archers had begun it, shooting at crewmen in the rigging or on the deck. It had taken him longer than he had expected to adjust for the way both ships were moving in three directions, which had earned him some sharp words from the grizzled archer who commanded the platform. Alerathla had gotten the knack faster, of course. She had always been better with weapons than him.</p>
<p>Thallan had been so focused on his targets in the rigging that Sea Dagger coming alongside had taken him completely by surprise. Grappling hooks pulled the ships together, the wood of the hulls grinding and moaning, and with a roar Junsable’s crew were swarming onto the other ship’s deck.</p>
<p>There was blood. He could remember blood flowing out one of the cog’s deck ports and into the sea, as though someone had spilled a keg of red wine.</p>
<p>And then it was over. There had been no more doubt of the end result of this fight than there had been of the one that had taken his ship. Like that fight, most of the opposing crew were dead. A few had been taken prisoner, and were bundled back to the Sea Dagger and thrown into the same locked section of the hold that he and his love had barely escaped.</p>
<p>If Thallan had ever doubted that Junsable and his crew were experienced pirates, watching them strip the ship and sway cargo in the middle of the ocean quickly dispersed it. They knew exactly what they were doing, and exactly what was to be done. And though the crew must have been elated by the successful fight (and their individual survival of it), Junsable kept them on a short leash.</p>
<p>There was, after all, money to be made.</p>
<p>Before the sun began to sink in the horizon, the crew of the Sea Dagger had moved the most valuable cargo over to their own ship, tossed the corpses overboard, and put a prize crew aboard the cog. The Sembian flag had been replaced by Junsable’s triple skulls, and together the ships turned south.</p>
<p>Asking around, Thallan discovered that Junsable wasn’t quite done hunting on this trip. The pirates of the Inner Sea had an unofficial code that forbade them from stealing each others’ prizes once they had been taken, so he had no need to escort the cog all the way back to the Dragonisle. He could stay out in the merchant lanes longer.</p>
<p>Thallan found it amusing at how the pirates couldn’t agree on whether it was better to go back as part of the prize crew, or to stay on.  The prize crew returned to shore, and all of its pleasures, faster, but they only got half shares of any prizes the Sea Dagger took while they weren’t on it.</p>
<p>They could always jump ship to another crew, of course. But that was apparently rare. Junsable found targets and made his crew rich, and to a pirate, that was all that mattered.</p>
<p>Junsable worked both ships’ crews hard. When night fell everyone wanted nothing more than to find their bunks, and leave the poor unfortunates chosen for the night watch to keep them on course.</p>
<p>So it wasn’t until the next night, after Junsable had turned them east to follow the coast and left the cog to make its own way to the Pirate Isles, that the party started. And that was when the crew discovered Thallan’s voice.</p>
<p>Thallan was quite proud of his voice. He had trained it for as long as he could remember. Longer even than he had practiced with instruments. It was the fine-honed scalpel that he could use to move a crowd, summon his magic, or lie without the least hesitation.</p>
<p>He was mildly embarrassed that he hadn’t been able to talk his way out of slavery when their ship was captured. He’d been certain from the moment that their capture had appeared inevitable that his powers of persuasion would see him and his love through. But he hadn’t been able to find an opening. Doing something as blatant and obvious as burning his only piece of magic was exactly the sort of thing he had been trained to avoid, but considering the result he wasn’t going to castigate himself too much.</p>
<p>But that was speaking. Singing, well, there weren’t many even in Cormanthor who could match him, young as he might be. And none of them had ever been on this ship.</p>
<p>From the first verse of the first song, he had them. The increasingly-raucous party died down to silence as the pirates gathered around to listen. The group who had begun the singing with some sea chanteys stopped, clearing the deck for him.</p>
<p>Thallan’s first song was in elven. He picked one of the shortest and most up-tempo songs he knew, and the sheer power of his singing carried the mostly-human crew through lyrics they couldn’t understand. Then, once he had their attention, he switched to human songs.</p>
<p>He was not the first bard in his family. It was an uncommon talent, but his great grandfather had been a bard in the dying days of Myth Drannor, and had spent many an evening in human taverns, listening and learning the things humans sang.</p>
<p>Finishing his second song, he looked around at the crowd. “So what do you want to hear next?”</p>
<p>Immediately the crowd was afire with opinions. Dozens of songs were shouted, many of which he’d never heard of. It seemed that he would be able to expand his ancestor’s collection on this sojourn.</p>
<p>Looking around, he caught sight of Alerathla at the back of the crowd. His love was watching him, her grin gleaming in the light of the moon.</p>
<p>Thallan felt his breath catch in his chest. It was a familiar sensation; he had felt it the very first time he had seen her, at a ball at Elven Court years ago. Then he had been a brand new bard, fresh out of his training at Semberholme, being presented to the Court.</p>
<p>By the grace of Corellon, and the high accord elves gave to their most skilled musicians, he was considered a noble. The minorest of minor nobles, but a noble nonetheless. Someone even the oldest and haughtiest of noble families would welcome into their homes. As long as he was willing to sing, of course.</p>
<p>Alerathla was as different from him as night to day. She was a born noble, the golden flower of the fourth oldest and most prestigious family in the entire forest. And one of those families, the Irithyl, were extinct.</p>
<p>She was also generally agreed to be the most beautiful elf in the entire forest. The most beautiful elf in the last thousand years, a beauty so radiant she could literally take your breath away.</p>
<p>She had certainly taken Thallan’s breath away. And his heart, as well. It had been years before he worked up the courage to ask her to dance at one of the balls Elven Court routinely held. When she smiled at him as they danced, and laughed at his jokes, he knew he was lost.</p>
<p>From the start, he had known it was hopeless. Elven nobles didn’t hold to the need to marry between their families with the same fanaticism as many human nobles, but there were limits. And a man who was only technically a noble, whose family had been tailors since long before Myth Drannor fell, was far beyond what even the most open-minded Echorn patriarch would accept. And Name Echorn was a very stiff-necked patriarch indeed.</p>
<p>But a hopeless tale had never dissuaded a bard yet, and Thallan had turned his considerable intellect into finding a way to win her heart. And in the end, all it had required was finding a way to be in her presence.</p>
<p>There Corellon had smiled on him. Alerathla had insisted on being more than just a beautiful face, and was learning magic from one of the Court’s foremost wizards. Thallan’s bardic masters in Semberholme had spoken highly of his facility with magic, and had recommended that he find a wizard master when he finished his bardic studies.</p>
<p>A few words in the rights ears, a recommendation from the master bard of Semberholme, and Thallan was one of five students to the same respected wizard who was teaching Alerathla. In addition to providing him the best apprenticeship possible, it put him in Alerathla’s presence daily.</p>
<p>And then his hopeless courtship turned out to be filled with rather more hope than he had ever dreamed. Until Alerathla’s father found out about it, at least.</p>
<p>But here on the open sea, with Alerathla smiling at him and an appreciative crowd around him, not even the thought of Durlan Echorn could dampen Thallan’s spirits. Perhaps the wizards of home would be able to find them, though Junsable had a great deal of faith in the runic circle he forced all of his captives to enter. Maybe it would confound seeking magic as well as Junsable said.</p>
<p>Thallan found himself hoping that it would. He wouldn’t have chosen to be a pirate, but he didn’t have problems killing enemies of the People. And Junsable’s firm hand would protect them from the crew until they could prove themselves to the pirates’ satisfaction.</p>
<p>He didn’t think it would take particularly long. As he worked the crowd into a chanting frenzy, he watched Alerathla drift away from the back of the group. She grabbed one of the ratlines and swung herself off the deck. A moment later she was climbing with a grace that even born deckhands couldn’t match.</p>
<p>There were two perches on the mainmast, and Thallan didn’t think she was heading for the crow’s nest. No, he suspected Alerathla’s destination was the archer’s platform, where he and she had fought their first battle.</p>
<p>The archer’s platform, and the crew’s single half-elven member, who had retreated up there at the start of the evening. He restrained a smile. That was his love. Always making connections.</p>
<p>* *</p>
<p>“He has a great voice, doesn’t he?”</p>
<p>Ilrin started, then cursed herself. She had retreated up here with some bread and a mug of grog to avoid the crew and their revelry, and had become so entranced in glaring at the sea to hide how much she was enjoying Thallan’s singing that she had completely missed the other elf climbing up behind her.</p>
<p>“I suppose,” Ilrin grunted. She had been trying to avoid the elves since Junsable had inexplicably decided not to throw them into the hold for later sale. On a ship as crowded as the Sea Dagger, that was not easy.</p>
<p>“Oh, he does,” Alerathla said easily as she settled down beside Ilrin. Unlike the half-elf, she had no compunction about staring down at Thallan openly. “And he knows it. And yet, somehow, he hasn’t much ego about it. I know that if I had his voice, I would be inordinately proud of it.”</p>
<p>Ilrin glanced at Alerathla. She didn’t want to get involved, didn’t know what game this elf was playing, but she couldn’t help but respond to the obvious flaw in the previous sentence. “But you have your face.”</p>
<p>“My face, my whole body, really,” Alerathla agreed with a nod. “I’m beautiful. I know it. I hardly can’t, not when it’s the first thing everyone tells me. But it’s nothing I did, you know? I was born with it. A blessing from Hanali. And a curse. With Thallan, no one knows he’s special until he opens his mouth.”</p>
<p>“What do you want, elf?” Ilrin demanded. That was not at all what she had expected to hear, and now she was entirely lost. It was not a feeling she enjoyed.</p>
<p>Alerathla looked at her. Really looked at her, keen elven eyes seeming to read every line in Ilrin’s face under the bright moonlight. “I wanted to talk. There are few enough women in the crew, and all the rest are humans. I was hoping to become friends.”</p>
<p>“I am not your friend,” Ilrin leaned slightly away, her voice harsh. “I don’t know you. We have nothing in common.”</p>
<p>“Neither did Thallan and I,” Alerathla said evenly. She didn’t move, allowing Ilrin her space. “And he and I were friends long before I fell in love with him.”</p>
<p>Turning her head away from Ilrin, she stared down at Thallan. The bard had shifted from solo songs and was leading most of the crew in an elven drinking song from Myth Drannor patterned on those of the humans. The pirates were butchering the lyrics and clearly having a grand time.</p>
<p>“We met at a ball, of all the bardic tale clichés. Do you know that it took him three years to ask me to dance? Three years of standing along the wall, watching me twirl in the hands of others. I liked him from that first dance. Most young men when they got me alone wanted to talk about themselves, or how lovely I was. Thallan wanted to make me laugh.</p>
<p>“I didn’t fall in love with him until years later. We were apprentices together under the same master wizard. There was one spell I just couldn’t understand, no matter how hard I tried. It kept slithering out of my mind every time I tried to grasp it. I was angry and frustrated and I’m sure quite insufferable.”</p>
<p>She smiled at Ilrin, and despite herself the half-elf gave a tiny smile back. “Thallan organized a picnic for me. Just him and me, at a lovely pond a little ways into the forest. He had a magical examination the next day that he really should have been studying for, but he took the time instead to make me feel better. He didn’t ask for anything. He just wanted to lift my mood. To make me laugh.”</p>
<p>She leaned forward. “You haven’t had much laughter in your life, I don’t think.”</p>
<p>A harsh bark of laughter exploded from Ilrin despite her attempts to restrain it. “Why would I? I never knew my father. He was an elven wanderer, who slept with my mother as a lark. When her village found out about it, they threw her out. We ended up in Procampur, begging on the streets. She sold her body again and again; I ran away when she tried to sell mine. I ended up aboard ship, hauling ropes and water and fetching anything the crew needed. I was ten.</p>
<p>“If I have any anything in this life, it is because I reached out and took it. I learned to fight to make others respect me. I learned to kill because that was the only way for me to advance. I was boarding ships and gutting merchants when I was twelve, because it was the only way to get a full share. You and I are nothing alike.”</p>
<p>Alerathla nodded. “You’re right. We’re not. But if you’re sitting there thinking I’m going to flee shrieking from your tale of woe, you’re mistaken. I am sorry for the things you have suffered. That shouldn’t happen to anyone, much less a little girl. And I understand what you’re trying to tell me about the woman you are. But who you are isn’t who you might be. You seem to think you’re stuck. I think differently. And whether I’m right or wrong doesn’t change the fact that we are the only two elf-blooded women on this ship, and I want to be your friend.”</p>
<p>“I’m just going to hurt you,” Ilrin said quietly. “Maybe I’ll mean to, maybe I won’t. It doesn’t matter. It happens either way. I hurt anyone who gets close to me.”</p>
<p>“That is your past,” Alerathla said. “I think you have a better future, and I want to be there to see it with you.”</p>
<p>She held out her hand in a human-style hand shake. “How about it?”</p>
<p>Ilrin hesitated, then took her hand. “Fine. We’ll see who is wrong.”</p>
<p>Alerathla grinned. “Pleased to meet you, friend.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I normally write fanfic just for myself, and to get the stories I come up with out of my head. But what with the pandemic and lockdowns, I figured someone might be interested in reading some of it. This is the start of Alerathla and Thallan's fairly lengthy story; if there's interest I'll continue posting it.</p>
<p>This story was inspired by a replay of the Heroes of Might and Magic IV elven campaign I did years ago. There, a foppish bard and his love are shipwrecked due to a pirate attack, and the bard has to become a hero of legend to survive pirates and elven court intrigue. I was annoyed by how the lady love was a non-entity, an off-screen ideal to be earned, and later in the campaign magically enslaved to the evil noble antagonist and needs rescuing. I decided to come up with a better version. </p>
<p>For those curious, I started playing D&amp;D during the Second Edition ruleset, and though this story starts well before the "present day" of 2e, I'm using that ruleset for this story. There are a couple of house rules (no demi-human level caps, for instance), but in general I try to keep my stories as rule-legal as possible.</p>
<p>Alerathla is a fighter/mage and Thallan is a bard (minstrel kit)/mage. Second Edition multiclassing is different than modern Fifth Edition multiclassing: you advance in two or three classes simultaneously, splitting your experience points evenly between them. It meant you were, in general, 1 level behind a single-classed character, but got a great deal of additional flexibility. And if the campaign ran long enough, things like a Fighter 16/Wizard 16 were entirely possible. Both of our elves are around level 2 at the start, though.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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